Thursday, July 14, 2016

Firstly apologies for the break, I bet you thought we had disappeared. We took full advantage of the short break in summer to make some improvements and do a little tweaking on the metrics we use to pull the data from twitter.

Now of course we can't tell you those changes, if you knew how everything worked it wouldn't be as much fun. Over the last 4 to 6 weeks we have made several changes to make the game more fun, and also to make it harder for people to cheat (yes sad I know but it does happen and in those instances a panel of three folks make their best judgment).

One of the tools we have added to make map updating quicker and easier is our interactive world map. This is not available to public but it is going to allow us to introduce a lot more fun stuff other than just who won what each week and it will make it easier for us to create periodical international editions of #NASLMap.

The interactive map plots every geo tagged tweet of any team anywhere in the world to it's exact location and highlights it with the team crest. A click on the crest pulls up the the contents of the tweet and allows us to quickly search for it on twitter.

We see everything and everyone, Big Brother is watching you!

All the metric changes we are making right now will make fall season a lot more fun, the real benefits will be seen in 2017 when we reset the map. We are also considering making a split season and have a Spring and Fall Winner and possibly a Soccer Bowl weekend winner based on overall tweets for each two teams on that weekend.

So what's changed since our last update?

Minnesota United despite missing out on the Spring Championship and losing to Indy Eleven again, have not been failures on the Map. The battle between the two teams on twitter has become something of a Super Power war. As we have seen matches between these two are heated on the field and it's no different on the map. The two teams meet again this weekend so there will be no let up in this "Shades of Blue Campaign"!

The Loons captured Arizona from Indy Eleven and also took Iowa from Jacksonsville Armada kicking them out of the Midwest where they have been resident since the beginning of the season. Minnesota also moved into the unclaimed territory of Nebraska and kicked the Carolina Railhawks out of Mississippi. An upswing of four states since our last update puts them three clear of Indy Eleven who also lost Massachusetts to the New York Cosmos.

The current Tweet breakdown in The Sunshine State.

The second biggest mover over summer has been north of the border! FC Edmonton have shown dominance in Canada by first reclaiming British Columbia from Ottawa Fury FC and spilling over into the newly claimed territory of Manitoba. The two Canadian sides play each other this weekend, and if the game reflects the NASL Map in Canada, then the score will be 4-2 to the Eddies!

In Florida the Tampa Bay Rowdies have held on strong to the State, increasing their overall holding by a few percent. Fort Lauderdale Strikers are the only real challenger and despite being second in the running they hold three other states on the map, they increased their number recently by stealing Virginia from the Railhawks. Miami FC and Jacksonville Armada are almost neck and neck in tweet number within their own state, there is literally a hairball between them! Miami FC are still homeless and Jacksonville Armada came a step closer to joining them with only one state left to their name. The total tweets in Florida by the Rowdies is larger than the combined total of Miami FC and Jacksonville, come on guys pul your finger out?

Outside of all that excitement Rayo OKC have held firm with no change, managing to hold on to Oklahoma, Colorado, Arkansas and Hawaii. Puerto Rico FC also remain unchanged holding on to their home territory.

Keep your eyes peeled for more fun content coming soon, some we will post only to twitter on @Bloody_Shambles and some will be adding to the next North American update as well as working on the first International Map. Don't forget to play, wherever you are on your travels turn on your location no matter where you are in North America or the rest of the World! Keep up to date with all the latest from our team at BloodyShambles.Com